


Fic- Stress Relieving

by Star_Nymph



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 09:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5201183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Nymph/pseuds/Star_Nymph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nightmares and their aftermath are nothing new for Damian. He'd rather attempt to get through the night without being bothered but Cassandra has another idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fic- Stress Relieving

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a bit of a warm-up, sort of a thing I've wanted to write for like two days now. I hope you guys like this silly little thing.

Ever since he could remember, there would be two states of mind Damian would suffer through when he went to the sleep. The first, more frequent, state was the journey into numbing oblivion. He would enter into pure nothingness. He lacked—he stopped—he never existed. It was a patch out of time Damian felt he walked into; escaping into non-being to heal his wounds without the nonsense of his mind to muddle him up.

Damian preferred the silence of nonexistence. Waking was like being born again, ready to handle a blade and stand in the chaos of war without fragility to slow him down. It was much more welcoming than the other state of sleep.

Nightmares. They happened on and off as an infant; most were unimportant, but terrifying and unpredictable. Vaguely, he recalled a made up memory of being lost in a world of light, chasing blood-ridden shadow tails across plains and plains of sand. When he would reach the shadow’s tail and grab for it, tagging the shade to a stop, the shadow would stare him—though he had no eyes—and would do nothing else. The nonexistent stare of that shadow, digging into him until his heart felt empty, caused him to wake up screaming in terror one too many times. Then, as he was a babe, his mother would come to him and hold him to her breast, luring him back to listless rest with the sound of her beating heart. In those days, he’d easily forget the haunting staring shadow and will himself stronger to withstand the mind’s failures.

Since he’d joined his father’s side, the nightmares had become a daily occurrence. No more did the shadow stare at him; now his dreams were plagued by rivers of blood and hands erupted from the pool to climb into his mouth, his ears, and his nose, to tear out his eyes while he squirmed for release. He’d reach high above him; voicelessly he begged for help but none came to his side. Father’s cape hung high out of his reach, his back turned. Grayson stood at the dark red river’s bank with his face ripped off—never did he step too close and when Damian screamed, he turned and walked away.

Only his mother would come to him. Every time she did, Talia would walk high above the blood’s surface, bare feet clean, and when she stopped in front of Damian’s thrashing body, she would take him by the shoulder and help those tearing hands drag him down into a thick abyss where the liquid and entails clung like dense paste to Damian’s skin.

Every time, Damian would awaken by leaping out of his bed and crashing into his desk. Tears soaked his heated face—sometimes he would run into the bathroom and get down on the floor at the toilet, shoving his fingers down his throat to get the blood he swallowed out, out, out! Sometimes, he’d retch. Other times, he’d spur out of the stupor on his own and feel the humiliation rush into him.

At first, Damian did not allow it to affect him. It was in his head, he told himself when he looked at his drained face in the mirror. Twisted, begotten, stupid doubts he’d let get to him. It always 6 am when he woke. For a while, he’d use the nightmares and terrors as an alarm clock, after righting himself he’d go train and from there, the days—and nights—proceeded as they should.

As time went on, the child found the dreams become more vivid, rousing him from his bed silently screaming, begging for the hands to remove themselves—pleading that his parents come save him. One night, Damian woke up from the shock of pain and when he looked at his hand, he saw blood caked beneath his finger nails while his left cheek stung.

He had told Grayson he cut himself while shaving the morning after. Grayson laughed and ruffled his hair.

The nightmares got him up randomly and would never let him sleep again. This night, Damian found himself on the floor of his bed, holding his hands to his throat, tears and sweat and drool cascading off his body. The child grunted and pressed the heel of his palm between his eyes as he tried to distinguish between the horror of his subconscious and his own reality. When he came to, Damian scowled while he sat up, exhausted from the internal fight, and did not bother to look at the clock.

Tsk—it was still night.

Shaking his befuddled head, Damian got to his feet. He yanked on a hoodie hanging off his chair and threw the hood up. Finding his ipod in the single front pocket, Damian untangled the ear buds and pushed them in as he exited his room and went into the pitch dark hallway. He didn’t much care what music he was turning on, simply putting the volume at the highest setting; as long as it filled up his mind and kept the images from creeping back, Damian would listen to even Drake’s poor choices in music.

There wasn’t much Damian planned to do after that but walk. He could train, but his body didn’t feel right for it, his arms felt like the wrong side of weightless—like if someone grabbed him right now, his forearms would probably break off like that of a hollow porcelain doll—and his heart was rattling off hard in his chest.

He was tired and yet, wasn’t at all. An irritating state to be and one Damian loathed pretty hard.

So, he walked. He went down through the many hallways the manor had to offer—a tiny ghost among the darkness and the dead faces in the family portraits. No one else was up or around or even alive. Good; he really didn’t feel like explaining to any one why exactly he was dragging himself around aimless at what was probably the middle of the night. Grayson, especially.

He swore if he gave him that puppy-eyed, concerned look one more time, Damian was going to—probably do nothing, honestly. Even the idea of proving Dick wrong was too much for the ten year old right now.

Something moved behind him.

If Damian even noticed a shadow spying on him from around the corner of a door, he didn’t really seem to care.

The child found himself in the dimly lit kitchen eventually. Why he decided to stop there, he had no idea. The internal instinct to lay down on something probably had something to do with and the kitchen’s cool countertop looked inviting enough for him.

Damian climbed onto an empty stool and flopped across the island counter. He let out a content sigh as his cheek pressed against the freezing tiles.

He laid for a while, listening to the blasting drums from his ipod, and he might have fallen asleep there. He wasn’t sure.

Time passed—a minute, an hour, a century?—but he didn’t seem to care much. It was only when he felt a presence that Damian gave half a crap to stir and that was only to somewhat acknowledge it was there.

If he was in a nicer state, he might have thought it was nice of her to let him know she was there—but he wasn’t. He was in a cranky mood and one that didn’t want to be bothered—more than usual, anyway.

Still, it’s not like she ever really heeded his bad moods before. Cain was fearless like that.

He felt his hood get tugged off and a hand fell on top of his hair softly, carding through the thick dark mass. The palm of her skin was hard (not surprising, considering what she did) and felt nice when she scratched his head soothingly for a moment there.

It felt so good that Damian almost let her go on. Almost. He didn’t, though. Damian lifted his hand up from under his head and pushed her hand away with it.

“What do you want?” He gurgled out, voice muffled by the fabric of his hood. He heard her move beside him and then lots of shifting.

“Here.” Cass said and nudged something against his arm. “Present.”

There wasn’t much movement from Damian at first. It took him some time to decide that he couldn’t just ignore her. Grimacing, the ten year old let out what sounded like a whining groan as he sat up a little, yanking out his headphones, and took what his sister was holding out.

It was a book. Paper-backed, thin but with a good amount of pages. Damian first decided to flip through it with little care to actually reading what was on them. There wasn’t much. In fact, there were no words at all. He saw inked images, but not much else.

He closed the book and examined the cover. An interestingly designed lion peered back at him, its mane colored in hues of pink, blue, oranges, and browns. Below, he saw the words and sneered.

“A coloring book.” He said dubiously. “You must be kidding.” He slapped the book down on the table.

“Hm.” Came Cain’s response. “I heard…you liked to draw.” She moved from him and walked off to the other side.

Damian glowered and ‘tsked’ at her. “So you get me a child’s book? Wonderful. Will you also give me a rattle to shake while you’re at it?” A little rude, perhaps, but Damian didn’t much care about politeness now. Being treated like a child was what he didn’t need right now. Why Cain was giving him the thing was beyond him—he could only suspect that this was a joke on her part (did Drake put her to it; that little--).

He heard pages being flipped and something scattering across the counter top. That something (or many somethings) rolled into his resting arm. Curiously, Damian decided to look where Cain had gone. She was across from him, turning on the kitchen’s overhead light. Her hair was drawn up in a messy, bed ridden ponytail, one of Grayson’s old GU ratted hoodies hanging off her shoulders—she was in disarray, maybe as much as him.

He looked down and he saw that she had own coloring book and had opened a large box of colored pencils. She stopped flipping through the book. Her fingers traced over the ink on the page and he noticed half of the page was in unfinished color. Black curves, swirls, circles, and lines made up a nonsensical yet intriguing picture. Some of the curves were colored in—he noticed that Cain really seemed to enjoy shades of pastel pinks, purples, blues, and yellows.

It was beautiful in its own way.

Damian’s eyes flickered up and noticed Cain was staring at him. She smiled affectionately and pushed the book toward him. She tapped the cover, her fingers finding the words again.

“Read it.”

The child arched his eyebrow with some confusion and looked at the book again. In a careful voice he read out load, “Adult Coloring Book. Stress relieving animal designs.” Damian return her glance and she nodded.

“I know you, um, like animals so that’s…what I got.” She explained, tapping her finger again. “There’s a cat in here. It’s…um, pretty. You should start there.”

“…and you bought me this because I like ‘drawing’?” Damian drawled.

“A little bit.” She took a pencil, a rosy pink, and started coloring on her page.

Damian wanted to tell her that ‘drawing’ was not the same as ‘coloring’. ‘Drawing’ was more sketching, really. He didn’t paint. He didn’t use oil pastels. He didn’t smudge his work. He used a pencil and piece of paper and sketched out his frustratingly colorful world in simplicities of black and white so it could make sense.

He wanted to say that to her, but then he thought it was pointless. Instead, Damian touched the edge of his book and pulled it closer to him. “’Little bit’, you said. Why else give this to me?” He teased the bottom of the book’s cover, hesitating to open it up again.

Cass didn’t lift her head. “Cause s-stress…relief. That’s what it’s, um, for.” Cass switched her colored pencil from pink to lavender. “I know you don’t sleep well…I hear you sometimes.”

There was hostility in Damian’s eyes when she looked at her again; like she had unearthed his worse secret and was using it as blackmail against him. He didn’t say anything, only twisted his mouth again in a way one does when they tasted something tart.

“It’s okay. I don’t either. No one does. It’s not, um, bad, you know.”

“Tsk. I don’t need to know about your weak moments, Cain.”

“I know. I’m not telling you that—but this is what I do when it hurts too much.” She went on. She colored one curve repeatedly, darkening up the color and covering up the holes. “It’s something to do. Something to make pretty when it…hurts to be. I thought it could help you, too…”

She peered at him behind her eyelashes. Cain’s eyes were a dark, rich shade of brown. In the light, it glinted honey brown, and Damian didn’t at all like the way they dug into him. It reminded him of the shadow he chased as a child, but rather when she stared at him, it was with familiarity and…love?

A shadow that cared—why was that more terrifying for him?

Damian felt a rush of heat to his cheek. “Tsk!” He flipped the book open haphazardly and slapped his hand down on a random page. “You’re childish, Cain. I mean, really? Coloring? Could you be more ridiculous?”

He stole the color pencil she was holding out for him to take. She was smiling at him triumphantly and he was not at all okay with it.

“You’re going to color a butterfly?”

Damian looked down at the curving, swirling, curling designs that made up a gigantic singular butterfly on the page. He hmphed and twirled the yellow colored pencil. “Why not. It’s not as if anything is better in this book. I’m doing it to entertain you, Cain. Would you rather something else?”

She laughed. “No.”

“Well, alright, then.”

They sat in comfortable silence for what felt like hours. Cain made them tea that smelt like mint and smoke. By the time he was done with the butterfly and she was done with her wall of her colors, Dick, Tim, and Bruce had risen up and entered the kitchen like a cluster of coffee-addicted zombies. Instantly, when Dick tried to touch his book, Damian slapped his hand away.

“I’m not done, Grayson! Keep your hands to yourself!”

He heard Cain giggle and he smiled to himself.


End file.
